24/7 Wall Street made a list of the ten US-based companies that pay their US workforces the least — and, for grins, also showed us how much their CEOs are paid. (Of course, defenders of obscenely executive compensation will say that one must look at how much the CEO does for his/her company, whilst ignoring the fact that the CEO isn’t the only one in the company or on the company board to be paid exorbitant compensation.)

Ironically, increasing the minimum wage would augment sales for these retail companies. Millionaires and billionaires tend to shop at tony venues, not Wal-Mart, Target, etc. The poorer fractions of society tend to spend what they earn, and they spend at places such as those companies on this list. They have to.

It would take Bill Gates and the Walton family many lifetimes to spend their net worth on common consumer goods if their spending were constrained to buying needful things. Obviously, if they wanted to create a private army a’la the Pentagon, it would take minutes to deplete their wealth!

I think coffee houses have taken the place of pubs and taverns of the earlier generation. I don’t think people drink like they did in the old days and they certainly don’t smoke cigarettes. Smoking and drinking went hand and hand on those days. Now it’s coffee and wi fi.

I figured I’d mention that Starbuck’s is one company that has decided NOT to throw its employees out onto the Exchanges. Of course, undoubtedly they’ll exercise some propensity to cut hours to avoid benefit payments.

While szielinski offers a path to the correct response — pay the workers more, lots more; pay the execs less, much less — and there is no rational reason these companies and others don’t do exactly that, the problem is an irrational ideology which asserts that paying workers less and executives ever more is… doing God’s work, like the saintly Jamie Dimon.

The obvious solution has been obvious since dirt was new, but it is only ever done when the Rabble arises — or credibly threatens to.

Or, as has happened from time to time, the High and the Mighty need the Rabble to fight their wars for them. Even then, the urge to pay less, contrary to reason, often prevails.

Other than that, even in tight labor markets, such as existed in this country prior to 2007, workers have been squeezed and squeezed some more and wages and benefits have either stagnated or fallen, no matter the economic utility of raising them in line with productivity gains and simple socio-economic justice.

This isn’t just the big companies, so-called Main Street America has really embraced this idea of paying people peanuts while demanding skills and performance…. all with part-time hours, no health care, no nothin’ other than the small-business boss feeling like God for giving some poor slob a lousy job at lousy pay.

My local Patch here in the SF Bay Area had an ‘offer’ for a job in a doctors office. The list of duties was detailed and involved everything from actual office work to running errands for the boss, watering the plants around the office, watching the patients kids in the office, computer database skills, answering the phone, scheduling appointments, patient interaction etc etc. The list was amazing. The pay offered? It was a range, probably based on whether you had a decade or two of experience and I wouldn’t doubt if bringing in a RN license, Masters or a PhD wouldn’t help too… $7.50 an hour up to $8.25…

This is the same CEO that was prasied at the last stockholders meetings when he told stockholders that wanted him to change Starbucks acceptance of the LGBT community to sell their shares. You praise him one week and bash him the next. How much do barasitas make in tips? What is the benefit package? What kind of education does it take to be a barista? A barista is at best a second job not a primary job.

People would love to drink as much as they used to but they can’t afford the ten thousand bucks for a DUI first offense anymore. Officer Muldoon ain’t gonna let ya off with a stern warning when his paycheck is directly based on proceeds from stops like DUI’s.

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